Why is it so common that people think that, pretty much -by definition-, libertarian free will means incompatibilist free will?

-edit- I even see Stanford Encyclopedia saying the same thing. — flannel jesus

In a nutshell: because people today - both academic and otherwise - have been habituated into believing that determinacy can only apply to a conflux of material causation / determinacy and efficient causation / determinacy - this to the necessary exclusion of teleological causation / determincay and formal causation / determinacy. But this is patently wrong.

To anyone who believes that it is not patently wrong to so exclude, please logically evidence how the latter two types of causes / determinacy must be logical impossibilities within metaphysics at large (or at least point to someone who so logically evidences).

Why do you think libertarianism isn't a subcategory of incompatibilism? — flannel jesus

It can strongly depend on what one makes, how one interprets, determinate state of affairs. This, for one example, can hearken back to the possibility of teleology determinacy - as one of many examples. Something that today's notions of determinism denies. Yes, I get that this outlook is by no means common nowadays, but I can find nothing to evidence the metaphysical, to not mention logical, impossibility of such forms of determinacy. But since teleological mechanisms are generally speaking jargonish to you, I'll skip the details. All the same, yea, I for one am a libertarian compatibilist. Have been ever since I read David Hume (maybe a different issue). So liberarianism is not necessarily a subcategory of incompatibalsim (namely, a lack of compatibility between libertarian free will and deterministic processes). One could also think of this stance as a form of "semi-determinism" - one which thereby endorses indeterminism (in the sense of today's notions of causal determinism) but denounces the notion of incompatibilism (again, between libertarian free will and determinacy).

I duly grant it isn't a common outlook nowadays, but it does illustrate the case when it comes to logical possibilities regarding libertarianism and incompatibilism.

Here's the way I look at it. When I raise my hand, it can be the result of a variety of things:

1. I internally desire to raise my hand, so I raise my hand.
2. I have no desire one way or the other, but someone raises my hand for me.
3. I have a spasm and my hand flies upward.
4. Someone shocks my brain and me hand goes upward (I meant to say "me" here so I could sound like Oliver Twist).

I think we can say that 1 is the result of free will. — Hanover

I see this as a misconstruing of what libertarian free will entails, aka that divine spark you mentioned, as some might interpret it.

How can there be consciousness's free will involved if there is no conscious deliberation involved as to whether or not one should raise one's hand? Yes, I get that we intend outcome X and then it happens without being in any way obstructed. We willed X (in this case to raise the hand) and it became real as we intended without any bars, so to speak, to our so doing. Many thereby deem this a volition, will, that was free to do what it intended, and ergo conclude it to be "free will". All the same, it's ain't the conscious agent which so decided between alternatives that it do so. Not unless there was that conscious deliberation which I just mentioned in which one deliberates between which alternative to choose.

Most of what we do on a moment by moment basis is freely willed in the sense of being done as we consciously wanted without any obstruction. We don't for example, deliberate on which words, what intonations, what volume of sound, etc. to express when speaking a sentence to another - and we end up (usually) communicating that which we wanted to communicate. Willed without obstructions to (or constraints upon) our so realizing and hence free in this sense, but this misses the point of that spark which is pivotal to the issue of what in philosophical literature is formally termed "free will".

And I find that this can easily converge with #4 which you've presented. No deliberation between which alternative to pursue, no (technical) free will. The electricity to the brain stimulates the same unconscious processes (a complex topic I'm seeking to keep as simple as possible) that determine our voluntarily raising our hand in manners devoid of deliberation. If there are no second thoughts to do so between which we deliberate, then there is no free will in the sense of that spark involved.

But whenever one deliberates between alternatives, then one does, or at least can be argued to, make use of one's libertarian free will as conscious being.

Technically, free will is defined as freedom of which choice to make in moments of choice-making. And not doing that which one as a total mind (conscious and unconscious) wants in the absence of any conscious deliberation (i.e., conscious choice making) so long as the outcome is not obstructed.

I'll keep this short and see how that goes. So I'll stop here.

I personally believe that in dreams the somio-conscious "I" is constituted of a lesser quantity of yet unconscious awareness-endowed agencies, a sleeping "I" which then interacts with fully unconscious agencies via imaginary phenomena that are mostly intended by these unconscious agencies of mind. — javra


That is what led me to think you were proposing a duality of I's. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK. I did however clearly express "the somnio-conscious 'I'". I don't find how consciousness and somnio-consciousness can co-occur to thereby present a duality of I's. I, for example, can still vividly recall certain dreams and nightmares I've had decades ago: to me, I am the same I I was in these dreams and nightmares as a first-person point of view (with differences in my empirical ego, contexts, etc., of course): same first-person perspective regarding otherness, same affinities and aversions, etc. Hence, to me, a continuity rather than a duality of I-ness.

The unconscious agent can be known to be permanent, because it is there all the time, [...] — Metaphysician Undercover

I can see what you mean, but I myself don't subscribe to the unconscious mind being an agent (a unified agency). Again, I find reason to believe that the unconscious mind is constituted of a plurality of sometimes discordant agencies, themselves always changing. As one example, when awake and experiencing a pang of envy one can at the same time likewise experience one's conscience influencing one against becoming envious oneself: here there will then be two distinct agencies that are antagonistic to each other, each emerging from one's unconsciousness, each attempting to influence one's future course of action or of personal being. This as one example of how the unconscious mind can well consist of a plurality of discordant agencies.

I don't think we can draw this conclusion validly. Evolution, and life in general consists of a lot of trial and error. The errors are a sort of dead end process which is not consistent with success. So if we assume that there is an ultimate goal or purpose, we cannot automatically conclude that the way of being which is current is necessarily conducive to the ultimate end. It could be an erroneous 'dead end' way. This lack of necessity, which is involved with teleological relations in general, makes teleology very difficult. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course. I did say that it can get very complex. If free will is to be upheld, for example, there's always choices between, for one example, further sustaining and growing one's (dualistic) ego at the expense of others' well-being and becoming more selfless in one's mindset and doings. Assuming that selflessness as an ideal is good and that selfishness as an ideal is bad, many will willfully chose the latter - this even if something like absolutely selfless being (which can conform to many a neoplatonist notion of the One) were to be the ultimate telos of being. But all this is simplified examples regarding the complexity I had in mind.

This supports my proposal that the conscious mind is an observer only. It does not even provide options for judgement, it only observes them, memorizes them, etc.. What actually resolves disagreement within oneself? The conscious mind provides all sorts of information, to facilitate judgement, but what part of the person is actually responsible for judgement? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not intending to engage in debates about this. What you here say indeed reminds me well enough of many a Hindu interpretation of atman, "witness consciousness". Yet, myself, I'll heavily lean toward this same consciousness being that which actively judges which alternative is optimally beneficial and should be manifested - this at expense of all other alternatives, i.e. of all other possible courses of action or of manifestation which then become rejected - and thereby chooses. In my own understanding, then, the agent (the conscious mind) always holds responsibility for the choices it itself makes, this in accord to its own judgments.

Yet, again, in this I don't intend to insinuate a division, else a duality, of mind. As per the iceberg metaphor, to me its the same total thing; only that some aspects of it as a commonwealth of agencies converge into consciousness and others don't.

For example, I awaken from a dream, and after a brief moment of reflection I make the judgement, that was just a dream. Prior to this the dream was judged (in some way) as reality. So my conscious mind has created a sort of narrative, a history, and as soon as I awaken I reflect briefly on these memories, and assure myself it was just a dream. I suggest that it is not the conscious mind which makes this judgement, because it doesn't even need that judgement. The conscious mind was never a part of the dream, and when I wake up not from a dream I have no question of whether this is reality or not. The conscious does not judge whether what it experiences is reality. So in actuality, the unconscious was in the dream, and it gets reassured by the consciousness that it was just a dream, and it makes the judgement that it was just a dream. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know. Doubtless that the unconscious mind influences consciousness in many a way. But, at the same time, I find that the conscious mind can via its judgments choose to believe in many a weird thing. To my shock, having partaken of this forum (and the previous one) for some years, I've learned that some conscious minds will for example choose to believe in solipsism - such that what we know to be our waking states of being they interpret as also being a dream produced by their individual mind (sometimes reduced to their individual brain). For starters, it's a rather egotistic, selfish, else self-centered means of interpreting the world at large, but all the same it can happen.

This page seems to give a good overview of teleology, but is considerably longer than this page, which also give an adequate overview. Notice that I'm not linking to articles that further these concepts in jargon such as "distal", etc., but simple to understand Wikipedia pages written from as broad an audience as one can get.

A "final cause", aka "telos" is far more than what you've succinctly and clearly expressed in plain language paraphrasing - with the latter being only one subsection of the former. And I'm fairly sure that without understanding what a telos is it's going to be more pointless than not to engage in discussion regarding how free will can be neither deterministic nor random.

That's all I've got for now. Sorry dude.

Alright. Maybe I'm tired and it shows in my expressions. Maybe you could bother to look into the rather basic wikipedia page of final causation I've linked to to better understand it. It's terminology and concepts that have a history of two millennia. Though not often addressed in today's materialist metaphysical understandings.

Thing is, teleology can easily reduce to basic concepts, yes, but - to my best current appraisal - to grasp the implications of teleology in the context of free will requires more than just today's basic concepts of causation and randomness. It's like discussing what fitness means in the context of evolutionary biology without any comprehension of the basic biological paradigm, a little like debating the issue with someone who replies "but the animal fits just fine in the box over there, so what do you mean it has no biological fitness if it never reproduces? And why can't you use ordinary language rather than a specialized meaning for 'fitness'. It fits in the box after all."

As I've said, maybe I'm largely at fault in my expressions, but I've got no problems in letting things be as they currently are, lack of common understanding on the subject though we currently have.

You've imagined a statue that you want to make. It becomes your goal to make it. You make choices to achieve that goal. The desire to achieve your goal is part of what determines your actions, while you still haven't achieved it yet.

Is that right? Is that it in a nutshell? — flannel jesus

That works. But to me it excludes things that are themselves important. Such that each alternative one chooses between, at the time of the choice making, is of itself a goal, or aim, one then chooses between.

"Distal end" sounds like a fancy way of saying end goal. Is that right? — flannel jesus

Sure, but the "end goal" is almost always relative to context. For most any end goal invisions, there is almost always a more distant or abstract end goal to which the first plays a more proximate part. E.g., you're aim is to satisfy you're hunger, but this in itself can have the further down the line end goal of staying alive. Etc.

What does "not yet actualized future actualized statue" mean? That's a very difficult phrase to parse. — flannel jesus

OK, not written as good as it could be. End is a not yet actualized statue that you intend to actualize at some point in the future - otherwise you actualizing the statue you have in mind will not be a personal aim you actively hold (say you're only imagining a statue for the fun of it with no intention to bring about any such thing in reality at any point in your life).

Ok. There's an intent, a goal, a not yet actualized end which you want, or desire, to make real at some point in the future. It could be a classic example of having made a statue, or it could be that intent os satiating one's hunger or thirst. Whatever it is, that's the end pursued.

So lets say you have a statue in mind as final product which you want to actualize. For as long as you move toward this - in this example - distal (or distant) end/telos you will likely make certain choices between alternatives (each being its own potential and more proximal end/telos) that best satisfies the accomplishment of you distal end.

The distal end, in effect, then to some significant degree determines which proximate alternative you will likely choose in your efforts to actualize the distal end.

The not yet actualized future actualized statue is then the final cause of your current actions, say chiseling a block of stone. Hence, the telos/aim/goal/end you actively hold in mind teleologially determines your current activities toward it.

So far so good? Or do you have objections?

Are you at all familiar with the notion of final causes?

In today's terms and commonly accepted metaphysics they're considered to not be causes but explanations. I term the process "teleological determinacy" to hopefully explicitly emphasize that intents/teloi/ends can and do in fact determine present motions - in the content of the OP, this as regards will.

If you're not at all familiar with this notion of determinacy which is more commonly termed final causation, then I get why the question makes no sense to you.

Can you please answer my question first. It still applies.

Right? Does that make sense? Like, even if you don't think it's true, do you at least understand the reasoning there? — flannel jesus

Yes. I do understand the reasoning. And it's that very non-teleological reasoning that I initially replied to. Somehow feel like we're going about in circles. So I won't repeat the summarized argument I previously expressed.

Do you still maintain that there can be no teleological reasoning or determinacy? If so, unless you can provide rationally justification for excluding the very possibility of teleological reasoning and determinacy, I'll maybe call it quits. I'm not intending to argue against unjustified affinities toward certain metaphysical outlooks that others nevertheless prefer to maintain - this despite their lack of justification.

Yea. I got that much.

I thought you said "theological" lol. — flannel jesus

Oh. OK

None of that looks to me like it has anything to do with what I said. I never said any of those things at all, I don't think. — flannel jesus

It's based on best interpretations of this comment:

The article (and I grant I haven't taken my time in reading it) completely forsakes teleological reasoning and teleological determinacy — javra


Thank god for that — flannel jesus

How else ought this comment of yours be interpreted, especially when taken into context of what I was expressing about intentioning's teleological reasoning and determinacy?

Have fun doing whatever you're up to. — flannel jesus

Visited my father's gravesite with other to commemorate his death. Not exactly what I take ought to be fun. But thanks anyway.

It's my understanding that they're mutually exclusive and mutually exhaustive. I've never been given a coherent reason to think otherwise, and I don't currently think there is a coherent reason to believe otherwise. I'm actually inclined to think it's basically tautologically true that, for any given evolution of a closed system from one state into another state, either that evolution is deterministic or it involves some randomness. — flannel jesus

On what grounds do you justify this rather stringent opinion?

As I previously alluded to, I disagree with it on grounds that I take the teleological reasoning of intentioning to be ontically occurrent and hence real. And it can neither be efficient causation nor randomness.

At any rate, glad you're aware enough of your own convictions.

But, to be honest, I'm mainly replying due to not then understanding what you intend by the word "will" other than something which lacks an ontological referent, as in this sentence:

... well, maybe something different might happen, but you can't attribute that difference to your will. — flannel jesus

To be clearer, if will, volition - be it conscious or unconscious - has nothing to do with intentioning and hence with teleology (succinctly, the movement toward ends such that the not yet actualized ends pursued to some measure determine the actions taken in the present), then what is "the will" to you?

Yes, but again, you are presuming a forced choice between randomness and causal determinacy - with a "thank god" attitude for not entertaining teleological reasoning of intentions.

Why doesn't 1 + X = 2 irrespective of whether one equates X to 0 or to 2? Because it cant.

I'm off for now.

Yes, I've currently got my mind in two places at once, so to speak. And need to take off soon enough. Misread the quote to read something along the lines of "would you have chosen differently than you did in the past given the same exact contexts". My bad, obviously, for having misread, but it is to that misreading that I replied.

And why is that fact - that the choice could be different if everything were the same - relevant? Would you still have made a free choice even if, in that moment, you were guaranteed by the facts of the circumstance to make that choice, no matter how many times we replay that scenario? — flannel jesus

As to the second question: Some previously made choices in my life, most certainly not - not due to what I know of their outcomes but due to changes in character with which the choice was made to begin with. Other choices, most likely yes.

As to significance, because that's what librarian agential free will signifies.

And how does one know what is mine and yours, except through memory? — unenlightened

Not an easy question to answer. I've worked with Alzheimer's patients, some in rather extreme conditions. One such I presume mistook packaging styrofoam for popcorn and began eating it, such that I had to struggle taking it out of the patient's mouth. There was still an understood notion of things like "my mouth" "my food" "my will", etc.

I'll just point to the fact that ameba have a sense of self in the sense of being able to distinguish self from other, not to mention other as predator or prey. And they do not have anything resembling what we term memory.

But the problem that the article points out is, if you drill in to any individual indeterministic choice - which is to say, a choice that has a non 0 percent chance of happening differently under the exact same conditions, and an ontologically real chance, not just a chance based on ignorance - then if we do watch it play out differently, that different result can't be attributed to the agent. — flannel jesus

In short, if the outcome is random no libertarian free will' if the outcome is causally determined again no libertarian free will. The article (and I grant I haven't taken my time in reading it) completely forsakes teleological reasoning and teleological determinacy (actions determined not by efficient causes but by the telos intended).

Indeterminacy comes in many different varieties, basically solely signifying not-causally-deterministic-in-full.

Furthermore, in lived experience (and not inferential guesswork) we only make choices in times of psychological uncertainty and never when we hold full psychological certainty as to what is to be done. In certain ontologies, this very psychological uncertainty as to which one of two or more alternatives are best can then overlap with ontological uncertainty in regard to future possible realities.

To make this somewhat more concrete, suppose you intend to go to the store to get some food. You thereby get into your car and start driving on the most direct streets toward the store - getting there with minimal waste of time being the telos which determines that you so drive (rather than taking a leisurely walk, for example). At the first stop-sign, though, there's an unexpected car accident that prevents you from following your initially planed course. At this juncture only, you will then have alternatives to choose between: say, going back home and purchasing supplies later, going left toward the store rather than straight ahead, or going right toward the same destination. Now suppose you take time to conceiously deliberate (weigh the pros and cons of each alternative). You don't have full psychological certainty of which alternative best satisfies your more distant telos: that of not being hungry. In this deliberation, you figure that because going right will lead you the fastest to the store on the available streets despite likely heavier traffic, and so you turn right. This decision, choice, is then that of a libertarian free will, for as far as you know going left, despite taking longer to drive on streets, might have been the fastest path on account of far lesser traffic. The choice was ultimately (under libertarian free will) yours as an agent. It was neither random nor fully determined by efficient causes. And you could have chosen differently under the same exact circumstances (both external and internal: beliefs, thoughts, etc. in a time of psychological uncertainty as to which alternative best satisfies one's telos). Responsibility for what happens then is yours as an agent.

This isn't meant as any kind of logical proof for libertarian free will, but it is intended to at least illustrate its possibility.

What connects the child to the adult to the old man is memory, a narrative that can be recited, — unenlightened

I've heard this trope expressed often enough. I think it was Lock (?) who first articulated this as being pivotal to the sense of self.

But consider that many out there do not have memories of their early childhood. Or else those with amnesia, or maybe even more extreme, advanced Alzheimer's. The sense of self yet persists even in Alzheimer's (via, for one example, listening to certain music). And even when not related to past events, certainly the sense of self persists in terms of "mine" and "yours".

I've tended to instead ground the core aspect of a sense of self on one's affinities and aversions. This, as one example, being a plausible reason why identical twins separated at birth or during early childhood can be found brushing their teeth when in their 60s with the same toothpaste, etc.



This makes full-blown sense to me. Consider that in all of humanity's history there probabilistically is one former human whose intrinsic, genome-inherited predispositions and whose first 7 or so years of life (a very formative time period for humans) are more alike to your own than any other. In terms of affinities and aversions to environmental factors and thereby core attitudes toward existence, their life would be as identical to your own as - via analogy - one's life one day is identical to one's own life on another day (separated by periods of sleep). And this same general outlook can then be further abstracted to a multitude of former lives.

The same roles (personas) playing out the same general interactions on the stage of life but at different times and in different contexts. And hence the same core self that ever evolves into different realities.

The tricky issue in so contemplating is when considering things not historically but in terms of the present moment. Same could be claimed of another human on the planet (who might look utterly different) that lives while you live. Here, the notion of reincarnation would be off. Nevertheless, there then would yet remain the notion of kindred spirits: someone you might see things eye to eye with to an extreme extent.

What occurs to me, is that you have effectively divided the mind into two distinct sources of agency, the conscious I and the unconscious I. I take this as two distinct I's. — Metaphysician Undercover

I take from having read your post that by "I"s you intend to specify selfhoods of agential awareness. As I previously mentioned, what i myself intended as reference to the term "I" was simply a "first-person point of view". An individual plant is certainly a selfhood of agential awareness (plants are known to be minimally aware of sunlight and gravity, and will grow their leaves toward the light and their roots toward gravity, thereby exhibiting agency; this in conjunction with an ability to act and react to otherness as a selfhood), but I find it highly non-credible that a plant will have a first-person point of view, aka an "I", as vertebrates, at minimum humans, are known to have: i.e., that which we term conscious awareness.

Thus interpreted, for various reasons (some of which I'll try to specify), I don't interpret the unconscious mind as having its own non-manifold unity of a first-person point of view; in other words, its own "I". For starters, in dreams wherein one interacts with multiple others, each other can very well be inferred to have its own, transiently occurring, dream-state first-person point of view, its own "I" - and these in some dreams more than others can conflict not only with oneself but with themselves as others relative to one's somnio-conscious self. Each with its own perspectives and volition.

Notice that I'm not claiming it metaphysically impossible for certain aspects of one's unconscious to unify in what could be inferred as a secondary agency-endowed conscious awareness. I take it that in certain mental disorders, such as that of alien hand syndrome, this in fact occurs to some extent. But I don't find reason to uphold that the unconscious mind is in and of itself a unified conscious awareness, an "I", of which we are unconscious of.

I assume that what you call "agencies of mind" is analogous with Plato's medium, the "passions". These are the emotive forces which produce what the mind creates. Notice that in Plato's description these so-called agencies are the same agencies operating in two different directions. This is the commonly made distinction between top-down and bottom-up. — Metaphysician Undercover

Though I approach the subject matter differently and make use of different terminology, I can very much relate to this, yes. What we experience as pangs of emotion - say pangs of envy which we denounce as improper, or else pangs of attraction toward another which we want to not occur, etc. - are certainly not of themselves the conscious "I" which is antagonistic in its views and volition to these "passions". Yet each such emotion shall be aware of the contextual realities we are consciouslly aware of; they will each try to pushwardly drive us toward certain actions via their own volitions; and they typically can only be dispelled via the passions of the conscious "I" per se to so dispel them. All this unless one willfully converges with the pang of envy to then, and only then, become oneself envious. Or else with the pang of attraction; etc. At such junctures, I take it that the conscious "I" converges into a novel non-manifold unity with what formerly was the pang of emotion.

It gets to be a very complex topic though.

This implies that the conscious I is not the real I. It dissolves, and disappears for extended periods of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting. I take it that here and what follows you found what is real based on that which is permanent rather than transient. But then I don't find reason to presume that the agencies of awareness of the unconscious mind are themselves in any way permanent either. Although its one of multiple possible perspectives, this is where I find the Buddhist notion of no-self can quite validly fit it: there is no permanent self anywhere at any time, eternally so or otherwise.

Having stated that, I find that the ontic reality of the first-person point of view is as real as anything real can get. That "I as a first-person point of view am (occur) when in any way aware" - although maybe not technically impossible to be wrong - is certainly incontrovertible.

That presents a further, very perplexing problem. What is the purpose of the conscious I? — Metaphysician Undercover

There's different ways of addressing this question. When one strictly focuses on physicality and maybe ponders why consciousness evolved (say among animals, with living sponges being amongst the simplest lifeforms in the animal kingdom / domain - and certainly lacking a conscious mind), I can't find any discernible reason whatsoever. There can be, however, metaphysical explanations for this - which, obviously, will be contingent on the metaphysics in question. I'll use Platinus as an example. If the One ontically is a fixed and unmovalbe end of being, and tf the grand telos to being is therefore to eventually become one with the One, then the evolution of consciousness will be derived from this premise to be a stepping stone toward this very finale. Of course things could get far more complex, but, in short, consciousness can be viewed as a manifestation of a cosmic will toward unity of being. And it's only in this latter type of perspective that I can find any meaningful explanation for consciousness's occurrence and purpose.

Why has the true (unconscious) I created an elaborate consciousness which understands itself as "I", and actually deceives itself into believing itself to be the real I, thereby suppressing the true (unconscious) I and only allowing it to reign at night? — Metaphysician Undercover

So, again, as previously expressed, I don't view things in this way. But in terms of consciousness's functioning and interactions with the unconscious mind given that consciousness currently is: most of what we intentionally, voluntarily do will be done without any deliberation on our part between possible alternatives. In all such instances we are consciously in fully accord with our unconscious processes of mind - we in essence become fully unified volitionally with the whole of our unconscious mind. In the best of times, we term it being in the zone, or else having flow. There are times, however, when our unconscious presents to us two or more alternative courses of action or of thought. Sometimes we choose not to choose between them (thereby allowing our unconscious to make the decision for us) and sometimes the choices we are aware of are peripheral to that we give primary attention to (here can can sense ourselves to make the choice while it remains quite conceivable that the determination was in fact made by aspects of our unconscious mind into which we willfully inhere volitionally). Still, there can be distinct moments in life were we find ourselves at a crossroad of alternatives between which we pupusfully deliberate, and the choice we consciously made is then pursued by the totality of our mind (and body). Only in the latter can we possibly deem ourselves to have metaphysically viable free will in that which is chosen as conscious beings.

OK, that all briefly outlined, we as consciousnesses do not create the alternatives which we as consciousnesses are aware of. These competing alternatives for what will be are all (at least typically) brought about by our unconscious portions of mind. My further interpretation is that our unconscious mind comes to an uncertainty as to how to travel onward and, so, presents to us as a conscious awareness these alternative courses. In essence, our unconscious volition is no longer unified but fragments into different volitions regarding what should be done - each alternative being in effect what a fragment of the unconscious believes to be the optimal path. We as conscious awareness then vote on which path to take, and our unconscious (typically) then accepts our vote as a determination of which alternative is to be pursued at expense of all others which then become denied. This is (or at least nicely conforms with) the terminology of Romanian Christian Orthodoxy wherein free will is termed "liber arbitru", the free arbiter - such that we as conscious awareness, as the "I", are the free arbiter.

At any rate, whenever we choose between alternatives, this with or without free will, we necessarily interact with the disparate volitions of our unconscious mind so as to resolved disagreements therein. (Yes, sometimes ultimatums and the like are presented to us from without, but even then we only become aware of, ultimately, what our own unconscious mind makes available to us.)

So this is certainly one reason for there to be a consciousness embedded within a total mind.

Now we have to question directly, the rationality of the awakened self. — Metaphysician Undercover

:smile: Getting into the metaphysics of rationality can be a very complicated issue. And I've already written my fair share for one post. But I'll say that - to here lean on Nietzsche's terminology for a bit - though in sometimes utterly different ways, the coherent and thereby orderly reasoning of Apollonian thought is of equally value for us as is the creative trial and error approaches of the Dionysian mindset.

I believe, that once we break down the entire conscious experience as an exercise in self-deception, we have almost nothing to start on as a solid, concrete foundation for rationality. This allows for virtually any possibility as the true reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

To my mind it could be rationally enough explainable in an Apollonian sense, but it requires a metaphysics drastically different from that of materialism. Contrast, for example, the Jungian notion of a cosmically collective unconscious with the ancient Stoic notion of an anima mundi. Terms (and their detailed implications) aside, it's pretty much the same thing to me.

So this would constitute a big difference between "seeing" in your sleep, and "seeing" when you are awake. How do you think that the house is caused to appear to the person in a dream, without the photons being picked up by the retina?

Suppose that this creation of "the house" in a dream, is an aspect of "procedural memory". How is this any sort of real memory, when the brain seems to be just creating random things rather than consciously remembering things? Rather than a type of memory, which is what the conscious awake mind is doing all the time, remembering things, dreaming seems to be a completely different sort of activity, where the brain is just exploring all sorts of weird things, maybe like a trial and error activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

To conjoin this with what I was previously mentioning, my own interpretation is that dreaming is a form of sheer imagining, only that in dreams the unconscious mind agentially determines most of what is being imagined, this rather than the conscious mind's volition as is typically the case when we are awake and willfully imagine things (things which in common speech are said to be seen by us with the mind's eye). When we willfully imagine a house while awake, we do it with a conscious intention. I personally believe that in dreams the somio-conscious "I" is constituted of a lesser quantity of yet unconscious awareness-endowed agencies, a sleeping "I" which then interacts with fully unconscious agencies via imaginary phenomena that are mostly intended by these unconscious agencies of mind. In contrast, a typical awake "I" would then be a non-manifold unity of agential awareness which is itself constituted from far more otherwise unconscious agencies of mind. It gets difficult in succinctly explain but it does coherently tie in with the view I presented to Patterner here - this regarding how the conscious mind is a convergence of certain aspects of the otherwise unconscious mind.

Maybe tangential, but to me it also accounts for the how and why of the waking "I" dissolving into non-occurrence when falling asleep and then re-manifesting as a somnio-consciousness when we dream: Basically, the waking "I" dissolves, or if one prefers fragments, into its constituent unconscious agencies which are otherwise unified, and thereby transiently vanishes; then, in dreams, the sleeping "I" reemerges but in what most often is a qualitatively lesser form; upon awakening, the waking "I" then is reunited from its constituent unconscious aspects. Because of this the waking "I" can sometimes remember what the sleeping "I" experienced during dreams, but the sleeping "I" most always doesn't have memories of waking "I"'s experiences.

Hoping some of this makes sense, even if disagreed with. At any rate, it's my best interpretation so far.

But the self is doing things which appear to be irrational, and the things which are happening to the self are equally impossible to make sense of. — Metaphysician Undercover

Want to draw attention to this typically being so only upon our awakening. When we are experiencing the dream first hand, we don't typically at that juncture hold an awareness of the dream being irrational. It merely is; and we find ourselves doing what we do in it.

It could be the case that the reasoning of most dreams is fully metaphorical with meanings understood by at least certain aspects of our unconscious mind but not by our awakened state of rationality. This, for one example, as the surrealists of a century past more or less maintained.

These instances, when sensations influence the dream, would be cases of the brain receiving, and dealing with sense information, in a way which is totally inconsistent with the awake (what I called "rational" way). This implies that the brain actually has different ways of processing sense input. — Metaphysician Undercover

Most definitely. The visual appearance of an imagined or daydreamed house, for example. Imaginings and daydreams are typically under the full sway of conscious volition, but in cases of hallucination, for a different example, a person can see a hallucinated house - difference from the former being that here the unconscious mind controls the imagining without any sway from consciousness's volition. Such that in more extreme mental disorders the consciousness will presume the hallucination to in fact be an integral aspect of the external world. And everthing just stated can readily apply to sensory experiences other than that of vision (smell, taste, touch, or sounds (such as that of hearing voices)).

We can ask, then, what is creating these imaginary scenarios. It is a sort of "self", which knows little if any bounds of rational thought. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm thinking that what I've so far stated by in large addresses this question. Its not a self so much as a commonwealth of sometimes disperse agencies of one's unconscious mind conveying information to one as a somnio-consciousness via imaginary - and I take it most likely metaphorical - means.

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To add to this muddle of views and information - and as much as materialists will snide and scoff at this - there also are notions such as that of Jung's collective unconscious. When entertaining such notions, not only can one obtain things such as meaningful synchronicities, but it can also allow for the possibility that at least some dreams in at least some people are influenced by the collective unconscious.

Anecdotal but true: one of my grandmas repeatedly had premonitions via her vivid dreams. Hard to explain even one of them in succinct manners, but the point is she would inform us of what will be, and it would then occur as she predicted from her interpretation of here dreams. One can question or deny the verity of this, but for me, who grew up with her, to claim that all her dreams and predictions were mere coincidence would verge on absurdity.

Maybe this is too far off topic. But I did want to draw attention to the possibility that some dreams might be more than merely the 'irrational activities of one's own physical and fully autonomous brain,' or some such.

I’m only taking by best shots in the dark with this. So, some thoughts. As a species we are highly visual animals. Just looked this up for accuracy's sake and found this:

More than 50% of the sensory receptors in the human body are located in the eyes, and a significant portion of the cerebral cortex is devoted to interpreting visual information. — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29494035/

This is not the case for many a different eye-endowed animal species.

But then all other mammals and birds (that I know of) close their eyes to sleep - and also to undergo REM sleep (which I infer to indicate dreaming) - so this might not be as important a it might at first seem.

Then there's the reality that opened eyes can get permanently injured when having the cornea scratched. So the eyes ought to be protected (in humans and other species by eyelids) when asleep. Closing one's eyes voluntarily might then be a preparation for going to sleep, and could well serve as a indicator or sign that one is wanting to so do to certain aspects of the unconscious mind. (I infer both mammals and birds to have a both conscious and unconscious mind due what i so far know of the structure and functioning of their CNS; an educated guess basically).

The other external sensory receptors and mechanisms (we do also have internal sensory receptors; e.g. this for proprioception, hunger, etc.) all tend to not risk getting harmed when asleep.

And, again, I'll maintain that the very process of falling asleep is regulated and brought about by the unconscious aspects of our mind. With insomnia as an example of when we consciously will to fall asleep but, because our unconscious mind is unwilling, are unable to. So in normal circumstances, if we are tired (something that our unconscious mind in part informs us of, imo; thereby informing us that it, or we as a total self, are in need of recharging our batteries, so to speak) and if we voluntarily want to fall asleep in a room with many conversations or with music playing, we'll often be able to do so just fine.

Anecdotally, I know of people that benefit in their ease of falling asleep by having the TV on.

My last few days have been crazy busy. i've only read your latest response to me once, which isn't enough for me to have absorbed much. hopefully soon! — Patterner

No worries. Please take your time.

As for the conversation the two of you are having, why not substitute hearing or smelling for vision? — Patterner

Ah. On one hand, MU was focusing in on the visual aspects of dreams, to which I replied as best I could. On the other hand, hearing and smelling (as well as touching and maybe even tasting) get far, far more complicated. :grin: We all experience our dreams uniquely in many a way, but I've certainly heard of cases wherein the dreams of a sleeping person were affected by that which surrounded them in the external world, including sounds and smells, even though they were not at the time in any way conscious of what was taking place in the external world. Then, also, there's the alarm clock, which at first unconsciously wakes you up into consciousness from sleep and the dreams therein had. (A good shove can also due :grin: )

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I don't think I agree with assigning agential power to the somnio-consciousness. — Metaphysician Undercover

Didn't have as much time and neglected this part in my last post. I have no qualms about what you say, especially in regard to your own experiences of dreams.

That said, we do all experience dreams differently. It is not utterly uncommon for some humans to have dreams in which they fly through air at will. I too have had such dreams growing up. I remember them being rather serene and euphoric for the most part. And I distinctly remember being therein endowed with a supra-human capacity of will, hence volition, to travel through the air as I wanted simply by so willing it. In dreams such as these, there is certainly found a free will (or at least a sense of free will for the free will deniers) in which one chooses as one pleases between alternatives. In this case, alternative paths of motion and different destinations.

On the other hand I too have had my fair share of nightmares. In some of these, the main terror was in an inability to do what I wanted (often to run) when surrounded by extreme dangers. And, hence, via such dreams, I can relate to the experience of not having somnio-conscious volition in dreams. But, maybe, it might be the very same, felt terrifying experience of not having that ability to do what one wants which directly points to a lack of what one during the very same dream in some way had expected to be there: one's functional somnio-conscious volition.

With that said, I again have no problem in the view which you yourself currently uphold. But due to my own experiences of dreams, I will choose to yet uphold that which I previously presented: namely, that (at least at times and in some people) some degree of volition will be present to the somnio-conscious dreamer.

I've so far done my best to politely and patiently engage in debate with you, as as debates should be, but you so far don't seem to understand what I find to be rather simple propositions and inferences. And I will not start entering into endless debates on what is is, or the like. This can very well be a failure on my part. Acknowledged. But to be blunt, I've got better things to do. I'm done.

You think you see a pink elephant. — Janus

A thought you based on what experience? Other than that of in fact visually experiencing a pink elephant, an experience which one knows one has had.

You have whatever you are experiencing, and you have whatever judgements you are making about it. — Janus

Again: how is that personally experienced not known to be personally experienced.

Nothing in what you quoted form Wikipedia contradicts anything I've said. — Janus

Sure it does: fallibility is not contingent on being falsifiable. Read the quote again. Again: example: M-theory could be wrong and is thereby fallible, but it is not falsifiable. This is in direct logical contradiction with:

and it is not fallible because it cannot be falsified. — Janus

It is verifiable beyond reasonable doubt that others are conscious, — Janus

Yes, but neither via observation nor by being a logically necessary truth, as per the material and logical evidence you've claimed to be the only type of evident to be had. As a reminder, this here;

This is nonsense as I see it. All evidence is material, meaning something we can observe, or logical, meaning something which can be shown to be necessarily true. — Janus

You don't think that there is input from the retina in dreams? What do you think the so-called rapid eye movement is all about? — Metaphysician Undercover

Here is something that is less than opinion;

These eye movements follow the ponto-geniculo-occipital waves originating in the brain stem.[17][18] The eye movements themselves may relate to the sense of vision experienced in the dream,[32] but a direct relationship remains to be clearly established. Congenitally blind people, who do not typically have visual imagery in their dreams, still move their eyes in REM sleep.[16] An alternative explanation suggests that the functional purpose of REM sleep is for procedural memory processing, and the rapid eye movement is only a side effect of the brain processing the eye-related procedural memory.[33][34] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep#Eye_movements

Emphasis mine.

Also something less than opinion: When one sees a house in a dream, one does not see the house due to photons being picked up by the retina and thereby due to retinal input.

As far as opinions go, I personally tentatively uphold the explanation given in the last sentence mentioned in the quote above. I have no way to prove this opinion, but I find it likely in part on grounds that people who do not sleep for long periods of time don't only become extremely exhausted but also tend to have psychotic breaks, i.e. go insane, which seems plausible if procedural memory is not properly processed. I also don't personally know of a more plausible evolutionary explanation for why REM dreaming evolved to begin with given that mammals at large as well as birds exhibit REM sleep.

A superb comment!

Some partial lyrics (in part pertaining to the term's usage):

If God is dead and an actor plays his part
His words of fear will find a place in your heart
Without the voice of reason every faith is its own curse
Without freedom from the past things can only get worse

[…]

Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong
Is to win a bloodless battle where victory is long
A simple act of faith
In reason over might
To blow up his children will only prove him right — History Will Teach Us Nothing (song by the musician Sting)

Don't be angry with me, but unfortunately my explanation has to end here. — Wolfgang

OK. I'm in no way angry, btw.

Do you know anything other than matter? Why are we always looking for something we have never seen before? Maybe because we want to solve problems that we have created for ourselves through category errors. — Wolfgang

Not quite. I'll be more specific. How is the paradigm of biological evolution via natural selection of itself material / physical? I for example certainly can't see, smell, touch, etc. this paradigm empirically, not to mention that is has no material or physical solidity or mass. Yet I know that it occurs.

Rather than taking my best attempts to answer for you, I'd like to hear your own explanations of how this paradigm of evolution is physical or materiel.

ps. Your answer in no way addresses any metaphysical grounding for your conviction in materialism. But that aside ...

OK, thanks for your views.

On what metaphysical grounds do you then hold such a strong conviction in "everything is matter", aka materialism?

If there were an ontological relationship, body and mind would have to be ontologies. That would mean that we are dealing with two substances or entities, a body and a mind. Descartes could not find a mind anywhere. His conclusion was that it must be immaterial. My conclusion is that they are descriptions of one and the same thing. Let's call it an individual, an organism, a brain, whatever you like. — Wolfgang

I think I get what you're saying and, if I do, then I agree. But this in and of itself to me still begs a question of ontology:

Is it all then a kind of mind-stuff, such as the objective idealism of C.S. Peirce would maintain? Is it then all a kind of physical-stuff, as the nowadays common enough stance of materialism or physicalism maintains? Or else - my own preferred outlook on the subject - is all stuff in the cosmos then of a neutral monism ontology: such that mind and body are in ultimate analysis just two forms of the same stuff which of itself is neither mental nor physical?

Your general thesis so far seems to me to possibly apply to any of the three ontologies just specified with equal force or plausibility. Yet, because these ontologies contradict each other, they can't all be correct at the same time and in the same way.

:pray:

This is the point then. If keeping one's eyes open is "generally" a matter of conscious volition, why would we conclude that the sense perception of seeing is unconscious? It would seem like "seeing" is something controlled by the voluntary act of keeping one's eyes open. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah. I can now understand what you meant. But this is a misattribution of what I claimed. My claim, again, was that consciousness (in at least humans) is dependent on processes of the unconscious mind.

So in terms of seeing things, my position is as follows: our consciously seeing via the use of our eyes whose eyelids are under our conscious control will all be in some ways dependent on processes of mind of which we are not conscious of, thereby being dependent on the workings of our unconscious mind. If these processes of the unconscious mind did not occur, we would then not be able to consciously see - with blindsight as one example of this. But because they do occur, we do in fact consciously see things.

Do you think that it would be the case that the neurological system is "seeing" all the time, unconsciously, regardless of whether the eyes are open or not? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think this is the case, not when one regards seeing as necessarily consisting of input from the retina. I think the way we see things in dreams is often a more vivid form of the way we see things when daydreaming or imagining. Only that when dreaming the unconscious mind assumes far greater agential control over what is in thus manner seen.

This might provide an explanation of dreaming as the unconscious continuing in its activity of seeing, after conscious volition has shut down, and the eyes are closed. — Metaphysician Undercover

It gets tricky here, in part due to often numerous ways in which terms can get understood. But, in principle, though we are not of a waking state consciousness while dreaming, we as a first-person point of view (as consciousness in this sense) are yet present in our dreams. Not only that but, as a somnio-consciousness (a term which I coined that I think nicely enough expresses our dreaming consciousness), we almost always yet have some degree of agential power (i.e., ability to accomplish) - hence, some degree of voluntary, rather than involuntary, volition. With one possible extreme of this degree of dreaming volition being that of lucidly dreaming.

Where do you think that the images which are "seen" in the act of dreaming derive from? Do they come from the eyes? — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, though I haven't looked into it, I don't think they in any way derive from the eyes, the retinas to be more specific. But that they instead likely at least in part derive from those aspects of the sensory cortex which are active when we are willfully imagining or daydreaming things.

Depends on how reliable you think memory is. Seeing a house in a waking state is easy enough to verify. Having seen one not so much. Although that said, since memory is not often proven wrong, we might have good reason to trust it. — Janus

It's maybe subtle, but you missed the point I was making. Suppose you see a pink elephant and it in fact is an illusion. So there was no pink elephant in the external world you thought you saw. All fine and dandy. Now, is your experience of seeing a pink elephant which in fact was not there, in and of itself, just a belief ... or do you know that you had an experience of seeing a pink elephant.

As to verifiability in the walking state, it is quite impossible to fully verify every single thing ever seen. Indeed, quite impossible to fully verify every thing one sees at any one given juncture. Most things seen we accept on trust. And not due to empirical verification. It would be exceedingly bizarre otherwise.

But the point remains. When is one's personal experiences ever not knowledge of what one is personally experiencing? To be clear, not of the significance of what one is experiencing, but of the experience itself.

Fallible means possible to be false or else wrong. It does not mean possible to be falsified. So your affirmation is an utter mistake of interpretation in regard to what fallibility and fallibilism entails. — javra


That might be your apparently dogmatic understanding of the term; it's not mine. To be fallible in my lexicon means 'could turn out to be wrong'. If there is no possible way to determine if something is wrong, then it simply cannot turn out to be wrong, and I don't count it as either fallible or infallible. — Janus

Uhm. In short,

Originally, fallibilism (from Medieval Latin: fallibilis, "liable to error") is the philosophical principle that propositions can be accepted even though they cannot be conclusively proven or justified,[1][2] or that neither knowledge nor belief is certain.[3] The term was coined in the late nineteenth century by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, as a response to foundationalism. Theorists, following Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper, may also refer to fallibilism as the notion that knowledge might turn out to be false.[4] Furthermore, fallibilism is said to imply corrigibilism, the principle that propositions are open to revision.[5] Fallibilism is often juxtaposed with infallibilism. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism

Of course one is free to idiosyncratically define terms as one pleases and then declare that thier quite commonplace usage is a "dogmatic understanding". I'm myself not one to do so.

This is nonsense as I see it. All evidence is material, meaning something we can observe, or logical, meaning something which can be shown to be necessarily true. If you disagree then present an example of immaterial evidence for anything. — Janus

OK: Consciousness, when strictly defined as a first-person point of view, occurs in others out there.

As far as I know, this proposition is neither verifiable via observation nor something which can be shown via logic to be necessarily true. But go ahead and either show me a consciousness out there or else logically evidence why the just expressed proposition is necessarily true logically.

I find this difficult to believe, but perhaps it's just that I love existing more than you do, and so cannot relate — Janus

No way to verify this, but perhaps you're quite wrong in this appraisal, despite the sincerity of what I previously expressed.

I would call it belief, not knowledge, and it is not fallible because it cannot be falsified. — Janus

Is one's experience of having seen a house in an REM dream a mere belief of one having seen a house in the REM dream ... or does one know what one has oneself experienced? How about one's seeing a house during waking states?

Fallible means possible to be false or else wrong. It does not mean possible to be falsified. So your affirmation is an utter mistake of interpretation in regard to what fallibility and fallibilism entails. M-theory, for one example is fallible (not infallible), but it certainly is not falsifiable ... despite being fallible.

If you would really rather be annihilated and all the evidence, we can have points to the likelihood that you will get your wish (although you won't be there to enjoy getting it), then what possible incentive can there be for you to bother with the vague possibility of an afterlife? — Janus

Your presumption that "all the evidence points to ..." is founded upon materialistic premises. These are not the premises upon which my metaphysical, and hence ultimately physical, understandings are founded. There's no way to adequately address my own premises in this forum's soundbite form. If you are sincerely curious, though, you can always check out my profile wherein I've placed a link to my personal philosophy. What I've got uploaded so far amply explains why I don't believe in what you call annihilation upon death. Otherwise, the topic is beyond the scope of this discussion.

So back to the issue at hand ...

—who knows why they occur? — Janus

Precisely! But that they have and do occur is about as undeniable as is, say, the claim that REM dreams occur.

But many do believe that and believe it on the basis of some religious experience. Which I think just goes to show how deep confirmation bias can run, — Janus

Hey, I fully agree. The difference between experience as data and inferences regarding it, which is not data. Be this in the spheres of science itself or else in the sphere of comparative religions.

One could ask for a cogent reason to believe in an afterlife. I've never seen such a thing. I can't prove there is no afterlife, I've just never seen a good reason to believe in one. Also, it's easy to see that people would like to believe in an afterlife—the idea, hell aside, being more palatable than annihilation. So, it's reasonable to infer the role of wishful thinking. — Janus

This isn't about your beliefs and likes nor about my beliefs and I'll again reiterate that my own personal likes are by in large that of instant "annihilation' of all awareness upon my corporeal death: to me, instant "salvation" form all forms of suffering. It just that I don't believe this to be the case, on rational grounds. All this is, your views or mine, is utterly irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Other than via emotive biases toward the comfort of instant "annihilation" via any metaphysical paradigm that supports this ultimate end of being, how can one rationally disprove the metaphysical possibility of an afterlife?

Notice, I'm not claiming that an afterlife can be proven. I'm only claiming that the fallible knowledge of an afterlife can be as valid as fallible knowledge gets for those who've had near-death experiences.

OK, but in all this your are maybe unintentionally forsaking a rather important, if not essential, aspect of all possible experiences: the intellect's intrinsic understanding of that experienced. A person who honestly experiences a near death experience will be entitled to claim, and quite validly so, fallible knowledge of an afterlife. This can be in principle replicated by bringing (all?) people into near-death -- barring the grave ethical considerations of so doing -- or else not replicated thereby taking credence away from the claim to fallible knowledge. Furthermore, it hasn't been just one person in history who's claimed this, but numerous, over the span of both time and cultures.

To be clear, I'm not one to then believe in a Christian concept of Heaven as a place that's eternally divided from a likewise Christian concept of an endless Hell.

That personal observation made, what further validation can one ask for short of the category error wherein one insists that the afterlife must in and of itself be physical/material and thereby empirically verifiable by all in the here and now?

Else asked, given the surplus of near-death experience accounts, on what grounds can one maintain that none of these folk can validly claim fallible knowledge of an afterlife?